Sin & Sunday

Throughout the Church, many Christians take the weeks before
Easter to seriously consider the weight of their sin and their great need for a
Savior. While Easter is always a time for joy, I personally find my joy
increases exponentially when I have first spent time mourning what the old hymn
calls “my helpless estate”. I can so often live in the post-resurrection life
that I forget it wasn’t always this way. More, I forget the rest of the
reality. I fall short of the glory of God, no matter how hard I try. I cannot
become perfect. I cannot earn eternal life.

To be human is, necessarily, to be sinful. To be sinful is,
necessarily, to be condemned to death.

I’ve been thinking about this fact a lot over the past few weeks—partly
due to the season, but also because it seems like every day I have been
reminded of the inevitable loss that comes as part of living: Tragedies occur
all over the world. Dear friends host what should be a birthday party for a
beloved husband and father, had he not passed away last year. My own
grandparents are suddenly not just old, but fragile, and I am forced to
acknowledge that our time together is quickly slipping away. I have been
burdened by the dark sorrow of death and dying.

But then comes Sunday.

All Sundays are mini-Easters; that’s why we gather together
Sunday morning rather than Friday night, as Israel did. When the weight of the
week threatens to swallow us up, Sunday reminds us there is more to the truth.
Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried, true. BUT. On the third day, He rose
again.

This past Sunday I went to a church made up of about thirty
people, most of whom are at least fifty years older than myself. They, of
course, understand the reality of death much better than I can. The deacon who
prayed over the offering had actually lost a friend that very week. And yet,
when he spoke of it he had nothing but joy—he knows his friend has gone to be
with the Lord, and what is there to be sad for in that? Death, he reminded me
with Paul, is not only the problem but also the solution, while it is still
called today. Death gives life in a real
way. Christ’s death gives us life, and his resurrection shows us what that new
life will be.

We grieve—and we should—over death, which continually
reminds us of our transgressions against our holy Lord. In a perfect world, it
would never have been this way. But praise be to God, the giver of life, who
does not let us languish but sends us Sundays to say, “I will swallow up death
for all time.”